October 16, 2012 08:22 PM CDTOctober 17, 2012 10:07 AM CDTMeet Mo Yan, the first Nobel Prize winner living and writing in China; see his thoughts on censorship and strong women characters

Meet Mo Yan, the first Nobel Prize winner living and writing in China; see his thoughts on censorship and strong women characters

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JOHANNES EISELE/AFP/Getty Images

A woman places a poster of Chinese author Mo Yan, the 2012 Nobel Literature Prize winner, at the Unionsverlag booth at the 64th Frankfurt Book Fair on October 11, 2012. Mo Yan won the Nobel Literature Prize for writing that mixes folk tales, history and the contemporary, the Swedish Academy announced on October 11.

LONDON — Mo Yan is one of China’s most celebrated and widely translated writers, and last week he added the Nobel Prize for literature to his list of honors.

It is the first time the award has been given to a Chinese citizen who is still living and writing in China. Born in the Shandong province in 1955 into a family of farmers, Mo enlisted in the People’s Liberation Army at the age of 20 and began writing stories at that time. Since then, he has written several novels and story collections, including Red Sorghum, Life and Death Are Wearing Me Out, and most recently Frog.

I spoke to him earlier this year at the London Book Fair about writing strong women characters and avoiding censorship.

Many of your novels are located in a half-fictionalized town based on your hometown in a way similar to, say, Faulkner’s American South. What is it that makes you return to this half-imagined community, and does having a global readership alter the focus at all?

When I first started writing, the environment was there and very real, and the story was my personal experience. But with an increasing volume of my work being published, my day-to-day experience is running out, and so I need to add a little bit of imagination, sometimes even some fantasy, in there.

Some of your writing recalls the work of Günter Grass, William Faulkner and Gabriel García Márquez. Were these writers available to you in China when you were growing up? Can you tell us a little about your influences?

When I first started writing it was the year of 1981, so I didn’t read any books by García Márquez or Faulkner. It was 1984 when I first read their works, and undoubtedly those two writers have great influence on my creations. I found that my life experience is quite similar to theirs, but I only discovered this later on. If I had read their works sooner, I would have already accomplished a masterpiece like they did.

Early novels like Red Sorghum seem to be more historical or even considered by some as romances, whereas in recent times your novels have moved to more contemporary settings and themes. Is that a conscious choice?

When I wrote Red Sorghum, I was less than 30 years old, so I was quite young. At that time, my life was full of romantic factors when considering my ancestors. I was writing about their lives but didn’t know much about them, so I injected many imaginations into those characters. When I wrote Life and Death Are Wearing Me Out, I was over 40 years old, so I have transformed from a young to a middle-aged man. My life is different. My life is more current, more contemporary, and the cutting-throat cruelty of our contemporary times limits the romance that I once felt.

Many of your novels have strong women at their cores. Do you consider yourself to be a feminist, or are you simply drawn to write from a female perspective?

First of all, I admire and respect women. I think they are very noble, and their life experience and the hardship a woman can endure is always much greater than a man. When we encounter great disasters, women are always more brave than men, I think, because they have their dual capacity; they are also mothers. The strength that this brings is something we can’t imagine. In my books, I try to put myself in the shoes of women; I try to understand and interpret this world from the perspective of women.

But the bottom line is I am not a woman. I’m a male writer. And the world I interpreted in my books as if I were a woman might not be well-received by women themselves, but that is not something I can do anything about. I love and admire women, but nonetheless I am a man.

Is avoiding censorship a question of subtlety, and to what extent do the avenues opened up by magical realism, as well as more traditional techniques of characterization, allow a writer to express their deepest concerns without resorting to polemic?

Yes, indeed. Many approaches to literature have political bearings; for example, in our real life there might be some sharp or sensitive issues that they do not wish to touch upon. At such a juncture a writer can inject their own imagination to isolate them from the real world, or maybe they can exaggerate the situation, making sure it is bold, vivid and has the signature of our real world.

So, actually I believe these limitations, or censorship, are great for literature creation.

John Freeman is the editor of Granta magazine, where a version of this interview originally appeared.

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